Leading scholars offer perspectives from the philosophy of science on the crisis in psychiatric research that exploded after the publication of DSM-5. Psychiatry and mental health research is in crisis, with tensions between psychiatry's clinical and research aims and controversies over diagnosis, treatment, and scientific constructs for studying mental disorders. At the center of these controversies is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which—especially after the publication of DSM-5—many have found seriously flawed as a guide for research. This book addresses the crisis and the associated “extraordinary science” (Thomas Kuhn's term for scientific research during a state of crisis) from the perspective of philosophy of science. The goal is to help reconcile the competing claims of science and phenomenology within psychiatry and to offer new insights for the philosophy of science. The contributors discuss the epistemological origins of the current crisis, the nature of evidence in psychiatric research, and the National Institute for Mental Health's Research Domain Criteria project. They consider particular research practices in psychiatry—computational, personalized, mechanistic, and user-led—and the specific categories of schizophrenia, depressive disorder, and bipolar disorder. Finally, they examine the DSM's dubious practice of pathologizing normality. Contributors Richard P. Bentall, John Bickle, Robyn Bluhm, Rachel Cooper, Kelso Cratsley, Owen Flanagan, Michael Frank, George Graham, Ginger A. Hoffman, Harold Kincaid, Aaron Kostko, Edouard Machery, Jeffrey Poland, Claire Pouncey, Şerife Tekin, Peter Zachar

When it comes to understanding and treating madness, distortions of research are not rare, misinterpretation of data is not isolated, and bogus claims of success are not voiced by isolated researchers seeking aggrandizement. This book's detailed analyses of coercion and community treatment, diagnosis, and psychopharmacology reveals that these characteristics of bad science are endemic, institutional, and protected in psychiatry. This is mad science. Mad Science argues that the fundamental claims of modern American psychiatry are not based on convincing research, but on misconceived, flawed, and distorted science. The authors address multiple paradoxes in American mental health, including the remaking of coercion into scientific psychiatric treatment in the community, the adoption of an unscientific diagnostic system that now controls the distribution of services, and how drug treatments have failed to improve the mental health outcome. This book provides an engaging and readable scientific and social critique of current mental health practices. The authors are scholars, researchers, and clinicians who have written extensively about community care, diagnosis, and psychoactive drugs. Mad Science is a must read for all specialists in the field as well as for the informed public.

In this edited volume a group of leading thinkers in psychiatry, psychology, and philosophy offer alternative perspectives that address both the scientific and clinical aspects of psychiatric validation, emphasizing throughout their philosophical and historical considerations.

From the Executive Director of Mental Health for Correctional Services in New York City, comes a revelatory and deeply compassionate memoir that takes readers inside Bellevue, and brings to life the world—the system, the staff, and the haunting cases—that shaped one young psychiatrist as she learned how to doctor and how to love. Elizabeth Ford went through medical school unsure of where she belonged. It wasn’t until she did her psychiatry rotation that she found her calling—to care for one of the most vulnerable populations of mentally ill people, the inmates of New York's jails, including Rikers Island, who are so sick that they are sent to the Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward for care. These men were broken, unloved, without resources or support, and very ill. They could be violent, unpredictable, but they could also be funny and tender and needy. Mostly, they were human and they awakened in Ford a boundless compassion. Her patients made her a great doctor and a better person and, as she treated these men, she learned about doctoring, about nurturing, about parenting, and about love. While Ford was a psychiatrist at Bellevue she becomes a wife and a mother. In her book she shares her struggles to balance her life and her work, to care for her children and her patients, and to maintain the empathy that is essential to her practice—all in the face of a jaded institution, an exhausting workload, and the deeply emotionally taxing nature of her work. Ford brings humor, grace, and humanity to the lives of the patients in her care and in beautifully rendered prose illuminates the inner workings (and failings) of our mental health system, our justice system, and the prison system.

This book explores the central questions and themes lying at the heart of a vibrant area of philosophical inquiry. Aligning core issues in psychiatry with traditional philosophical areas, it presents a focused overview of the historical and contemporary problems dominating the philosophy of psychiatry. Beginning with an introduction to philosophy of psychiatry, the book addresses what psychiatry is and distinguishes it from other areas of medical practice, other health care professions and psychology. With each section of the companion corresponding to a philosophical subject, contributors systematically cover relevant topics in philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, ethics, social and political philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, phenomenology, and philosophy of medicine. Looking ahead to new research directions, chapters address recent issues including the metaphysics of mental disorders, gender and race in psychiatry and psychiatric ethics. Featuring discussion questions, suggestions for further reading and an annotated bibliography, The Bloomsbury Companion to Philosophy of Psychiatry is an accessible survey of the debates and developments in the field suitable for undergraduates in philosophy and professional philosophers new to philosophy of psychiatry.

Psychiatry: Past, Present, and Prospect brings together perspectives from a group of highly respected psychiatrists, each with decades of experience in clinical practice. The topics covered range from scientific discoveries of all kinds, advances in treatment, and conceptual breakthroughs. The highlights are countered by the field's negative sides: perennial indecisiveness about the boundaries of psychiatry; the limitations of a narrow approach to human suffering; the retreat from the hope of a de-institutionalised, community-based psychiatry; the divide between biological treatments and psychotherapy; the technical and ethical complexities of psychiatric research; and the low priority given to psychiatry, especially but far from exclusively in less developed countries. The result is a text full of collected wisdom which will promote the curiosity of mental health professionals about key developments in psychiatry over the past half century; sensitize the next generation of mental health professionals to the role they might play in advancing the state of knowledge about mental illness and its treatment during the course of their careers; and serve as a valuable archival resource for scholars. This collection of viewpoints from very experienced leaders in the field of psychiatry will prove fascinating reading for psychiatrists and allied mental health professionals, such as psychologists, psychiatric social workers, psychiatric nurses and occupational therapists, both trained and in training. It will also offer the interested laity a balanced account of psychiatry's evolution since the 1950s, and its likely prospects in the 21st century.

Since its third edition in 1980, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association has acquired a hegemonic role in the health care professions and has had a broad impact on the lay public. The publication in May 2013 of its fifth edition, the DSM-5, marked the latest milestone in the history of the DSM and of American psychiatry. In The DSM-5 in Perspective: Philosophical Reflections on the Psychiatric Babel, experts in the philosophy of psychiatry propose original essays that explore the main issues related to the DSM-5, such as the still weak validity and reliability of the classification, the scientific status of its revision process, the several cultural, gender and sexist biases that are apparent in the criteria, the comorbidity issue and the categorical vs. dimensional debate. For several decades the DSM has been nicknamed “The Psychiatric Bible.” This volume would like to suggest another biblical metaphor: the Tower of Babel. Altogether, the essays in this volume describe the DSM as an imperfect and unachievable monument – a monument that was originally built to celebrate the new unity of clinical psychiatric discourse, but that ended up creating, as a result of its hubris, ever more profound practical divisions and theoretical difficulties.